After substantial progress over the last 15 years, the "algebraic CSP-dichotomy conjecture" reduces to the following: every local constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) associated with a finite idempotent algebra is tractable if and only if the algebra has a Taylor term operation. Despite the tremendous achievements in this area (including recently announce proofs of the general conjecture), there remain examples of small algebras with just a single binary operation whose CSP resists direct classification as either tractable or NP-complete using known methods. In this paper we present some new methods for approaching such problems, with particular focus on those techniques that help us attack the class of finite algebras known as "commutative idempotent binars" (CIBs). We demonstrate the utility of these methods by using them to prove that every CIB of cardinality at most 4 yields a tractable CSP.

We prove that several problems concerning congruences on algebras are complete for nondeterministic log-space. These problems are: determining the congruence on a given algebra generated by a set of pairs, and determining whether a given algebra is simple or subdirectly irreducible. We also consider the problem of determining the smallest fully invariant congruence on a given algebra containing a given set of pairs. We prove that this problem is complete for nondeterministic polynomial time.

In this paper we consider the complexity of several problems involving finite algebraic structures. Given finite algebras A and B, these problems ask the following. (1) Do A and B satisfy precisely the same identities? (2) Do they satisfy the same quasi-identities? (3) Do A and B have the same set of term operations? In addition to the general case in which we allow arbitrary (finite) algebras, we consider each of these problems under the restrictions that all operations are unary and that A and B have cardinality two. We briefly discuss the relationship of these problems to algebraic specification theory.